Jerusalem Interlude

by Bodie Thoene

  “What do you want?” she asked, with surprising harshness.

  They turned and coolly appraised her. “So,” said the red-faced man in a thick peasant speech, “Herr Doktor Letzno has gone off to Palestine.”

  “Yes. You seem to know everything. And what you do not know you make up. In this instance, you are correct. He is gone. What has that to do with me? Why are you interrupting my work?” This tone was startling. The blue eyes of Etta Lubetkin flashed her outrage.

  “Well, my pretty Frau Lubetkin.” The red-face man smiled. His teeth were decayed, his face lumpy, and his nose discolored from too much cheap brandy. Etta smelled the brandy on his breath.

  “How dare you address me in such a manner?” she snapped.

  “Why don’t you have us arrested?” laughed the man.

  His partner sneered and nodded at the jest.

  “You are in my home. If you have something to say, say it and leave.” Etta crossed her arms defiantly.

  “Well then, to the point, Ivan.” The red-faced man deferred to his partner, who stepped forward.

  “Frau Lubetkin,” the second man said patronizingly, “we were talking about the matter of fines just now. We let you off too easily, you see. Such an error could cost us our positions.”

  “Yes, blackmail could get you fired!” Etta retorted. She felt strong in her defiance of them. She had recovered from her ordeal now. She could handle them. “Shall I call your captain and report what you have done?”

  The red-faced man chuckled and rubbed his bulbous nose. “It was the captain who informed us of the error. Not enough money, you see. Not enough to keep you out of jail for prostitution. You did not pay a big enough fine, Frau Lubetkin. And so we are here to arrest you.”

  Etta’s self-composure faltered only an instant. She swallowed hard and raised her head in such an aristocratic gesture that the grins of these bullies faltered a bit. “You are swine,” she said in Yiddish.

  They exchanged looks. Angry. Instantly threatening. “We know what you said, you Jewish whore, and now you will pay us or we will take you to jail. There is a cell for women like you. The men of the police force visit it often.”

  Etta could not find her voice at this threat. For a full minute she stood in the center of Aaron’s study. She glared at them, and they seemed frozen by her look. She thought through all of it. All the implications of what they said. Probably they could do what they wanted with her. Put her in a place like that. Keep the key in their own pockets, and . . . . The thought sickened her. She must tell Aaron. There was no other way. But until she could tell him she must pay them.

  Eduard’s checks! She looked through the door to where her handbag sat on the sideboard beside the silver tea service.

  “A nice place you have here,” said the red-faced policeman. “You Jews are wealthy people. You live better than honest, hard-working Poles, don’t you?”

  Without a word she turned her back and went to her handbag. She pulled out the first of Eduard’s checks and held it in her hands. The movement of a rustling petticoat sounded on the stair above her. Frau Rosen glared down at her—questioning, angry, revolted by whatever was happening with the mistress of the house.

  “Frau Rosen!” snapped Etta. “You will see to baby Yacov now, please.”

  Frau Rosen nodded reluctantly and turned from her eavesdropping.

  Etta did not go back into the study. She waited in the foyer and held the check for the blackmailers to see. Then she came out and she preceded them to the front door. Opening it to a cold blast of air, she stepped out and they followed. Then she stepped back in and handed them the check. “There will be no more,” she warned.

  They looked at the amount on the check and seemed pleased.

  She glared at them for an instant. “You may drink that up as well, but there will be no more for you. Do not come back into my neighborhood or on my street or to my home. There will be nothing more for you here.”

  With that, she closed the door, shutting them out. She slid the bolt and then peeked out around the lace curtain of the foyer window and watched as they clapped each other on the back and tramped through the snow across the Square.

  ***

  The bomb blast had killed indiscriminately. Four Arabs were dead. Five Jews. The numbers of wounded were equally divided as the ambulances screamed up Mount Scopus to Hadassah Hospital. Twelve seriously wounded. Eight of those critical. Thirty-two came into the wards listed as stable. Leah Feldstein, with ruptured eardrums and a miscarriage in process, was one of those in the last group.

  Eduard Letzno had not anticipated this horror as he had toured Hadassah Hospital on his first day in Jerusalem. When word came of what had happened and the ambulances had begun to arrive, the resident physicians had looked upon Eduard’s presence there as providential.

  While teams had worked together on the critical patients, Eduard and three medical students had labored to assist those with superficial wounds, cleaning, stitching, and bandaging those who were in no real danger.

  In the case of Leah Feldstein, there had been little to do. She had told Eduard she thought she was pregnant. Her bleeding was certainly not heavy enough to threaten her life, but miscarriage was inevitable. An IV was administered. She was put to bed. Eduard was more concerned with the possibility of loss of hearing in her right ear, which was damaged more severely than her left.

  He explained all this to her grieved husband as they stood together outside the crowded ward.

  “She is . . . she has lost the baby?” asked Shimon.

  “She is lucky that she sustained no other injuries—or worse.” Eduard tried to comfort Shimon with the realization that she might have been in the morgue right now instead of in the hospital ward. This thought only struck the big man with a more terrible kind of grief—what might have been, what almost was!

  “But she is all right?” he clutched Eduard’s arm in a vise-like grip.

  “I see no reason why she will not have other children. The pregnancy was in the very early stages. She tells me she had not even consulted a doctor yet. We will keep her here for observation, of course.” Eduard could not escape the intense and searching gaze of Shimon.

  “But her hearing . . .” Shimon rubbed his eyes. “She is a concert musician, you see. A cellist.” His voice broke. “Herr Doktor! This is all my Leah knows to do. Music is her life, you see, and—”

  This news alarmed Eduard more than the young woman’s spontaneous abortion. She would probably conceive again, but he could not be optimistic that there was not at least some damage to her hearing. And there was nothing at all that could be done if that was the case. “We will monitor her progress, of course,” he replied almost curtly. It was a habit he had formed to shield himself from the emotions of his patients. “In the meantime Herr Feldstein, there are many dead and seriously wounded here today. Count yourself and your wife lucky in this case that she is alive.”

  Mercifully, a nurse called Eduard’s name and he was spared further discussion. “You may see her.” He managed a near smile as he brushed past the big man to confer with the mother of a young man who had lost his right arm in the blast.

  ***

  Shimon was shaking as he entered the large ward of twenty beds. Some were surrounded by white curtains. The air smelled of antiseptic and floor wax. The soft murmur of voices filled his ears. He stood unmoving as he scanned the rows for Leah. He wished he did not feel so weak, so frightened and sick. She was the one who was hurt, not he. Why did his knees feel as though they would buckle if he took even one step?

  A nurse emerged from behind a curtain. “You are looking for someone?”

  “Leah Feldstein.”

  “On the end. By the window.” The face was kind and sympathetic.

  Shimon heard a baby cry. Only then did he realize he was in an obstetrics ward. He put a hand to his head. The sound made him feel faint. It seemed too cruel to put her here where she would hear the babies.

  He walked unsteadily t
o the end of the ward and peeked cautiously in through the slit curtain. Yes. Leah. She looked . . . awful. Glass bottle. Needle in her arm. Pale and tiny. Her head bandaged. Ears covered with gauze. She will not hear the babies after all. The realization made tears come to his eyes. His throat burned with the agony of emotion he felt he must master.

  White iron rails guarded her bed, as if she were a small child and might fall out. He stepped into the cubicle. The curtain clung to him as he sidled up toward the head of the bed. He did not want to wake her. Why did we not stay in England? Or America? Lord, did you bring us here for this?

  He stood beside her for a quarter of an hour and mourned. For their lost life in Vienna. For their lost child. For lost innocence. Once he had believed that the world was mostly good—people mostly good-hearted; nations just; governments trying their best. But standing by Leah, he remembered again the child Ada-Marie. The faces on the Darien. Evil was somehow personal and real. It had chosen to destroy the People of the Book because to do so would be to make the Covenant of that book a lie and God a liar!

  Shimon clenched his fist and raised it slightly in anger at this personal Evil that had killed their child and the children of the Darien and now nearly Leah. “No matter what you do,” he whispered hoarsely, “we will not curse God! Give up! You cannot defeat Him! Kill us and we will be with Him! Drive us into the sea and He is there! You will not have your way with Shimon and Leah Feldstein or our children! Even in sorrow we will believe in the promise of our Holy Messiah!”

  Such words were nothing Shimon had learned in synagogue as a boy. They were not a prayer, certainly, but instantly a heaviness lifted from him. He took a deep breath, as if he had just run and won a terrible race against his own despair. Only now did he feel that somehow he would have the strength to encourage and comfort Leah. He squared his shoulders and prayed for help. He touched her arm and her brown eyes opened in confusion. First relief, then sorrow shadowed her face at the sight of Shimon.

  It was her turn to cry. Silent tears dripped from the corners of her eyes. “I am so sorry,” she whispered, reaching up to him. “No baby, my darling . . . so sorry . . .”

  He knelt beside the bed and touched her face, careful of the bandages. “We will have others, the doctor says.”

  “I cannot hear you,” she replied, fumbling beneath the blanket to pull out a clipboard with paper and a pencil attached to a string. “I cannot hear anything.” She closed her eyes with a sob and covered her mouth. Then she looked at him. “I am so sorry,” she choked.

  He was shaking his head, speaking words that she could not hear, I love you. Everything will be fine. Do not be afraid. We will have a family. You will hear your own music again. You are alive, my dearest, and nothing else seems important right now.

  “I cannot hear you, Shimon.” She managed a pitiful smile through the tears. “You have to write it down.” And then as he nodded and began to write, she talked and told him what happened. “So fast . . . so fast . . . I saw them. Arabs. They left the car and trapped the bus, and then I fell down. Maybe someone pushed me down. A light flashed; I couldn’t hear but there were people hurt everywhere. The English soldier came and shielded my eyes. I did not get to Victoria. Eli’s note is still in my pocket. I . . . started bleeding in the ambulance and I knew . . . the baby was . . . going away . . . I’m sorry.”

  Shimon finished his scrawled note. He had written down all the things he had said to her and then added:

  This is the eighth blessing of the Amidah—the Shemoneh Esrei. I prayed every week in synagogue and never believed it before now. But now I am praying this for you, Leah.

  He finished the note in Hebrew:

  Heal us, O Lord and we shall be healed,

  Save us and we shall be saved

  For You are our glory.

  Send complete healing for our every illness.

  And then he wrote in German:

  For Leah’s ears, for her womb, and for her heart, we ask healing and we will give you thanks.

  Then again in Hebrew:

  For You, divine King, are the faithful, merciful Physician. Blessed are You, Lord, who heals the sick of His people Israel!

  In German he wrote:

  I do not know any other prayers for such a moment, but now I pray it in my heart and not just on my lips. The Lord will hear and answer. Be comforted, my love!

  Leah read the prayer out loud and in those ancient words of the Shemoneh Esrei, she found the comfort her heart longed for. “I will keep it here beside me in bed. Will you bring my Bible?”

  Shimon nodded in reply.

  “And will you also bring me good stationery? Elisa will hear about this in the newspapers. I must write and tell her.”

  He nodded again, then gave her a warm, relieved embrace. He pressed her strong, calloused fingertips to his lips. Leah’s soul was music. He heard it even now in the antiseptic clatter of Hadassah Hospital, amid the sweet cries of babies that were not their own.

  ***

  Samuel Orde had returned to the hospital with Shimon Feldstein. His purpose for doing so was more than an act of mercy, however.

  He waited in a small anteroom set aside for medical consultation. It was urgent that he speak with Dr. Letzno about the woman’s condition. There were a number of questions she could possibly answer. The sooner Orde was able to speak with her the better.

  Impatient and haggard-looking, Dr. Letzno pulled open the door and confronted the British captain. “There are injured people here, Captain Orde,” he said sharply. “Make this quick.”

  “Leah Feldstein . . .”

  “What about her?”

  “She was closest to the blast. She is the one survivor who was close enough to see the terrorists.”

  “A fact I am certain she would like to forget.”

  “I need to speak with her about it. If she can identify the men—“

  “The woman has undergone a miscarriage, an emotional loss as well as physical. Tonight she is not a witness but my patient, Captain Orde.”

  “I do not mean to appear calloused,” Orde began.

  “Then save your questions at least until tomorrow!” Dr. Letzno snapped.

  “If I do that the perpetrators may get away.”

  “It seems that they have already done so.”

  “We have roadblocks on every road leaving Jerusalem. But roadblocks will do us no good if we do not have a physical description of the terrorists who have done this.” Orde was firm. “If we catch them, perhaps it will prevent others from being hurt in the future.”

  The doctor seemed to hear him. He sighed and mopped his brow. There was so much grief here today. So many hurt. They must stop such a thing from happening again, catch the animals who had done this thing! He nodded. “She is sedated. I cannot guarantee anything. Come on, then.” He opened the door and expected Orde to follow him to the ward.

  The halls were quieter now. Some still sat on the long benches at the end of the corridor, waiting for word, but most of the relatives had gone home. Orde had not realized that it was nearly midnight until he glanced at the clock above the nurses‘ station.

  The doctor walked quickly toward the ward where Leah rested. The long room was dark except for the dim lights on the call buttons beside each bed.

  The countenance of the doctor changed as he stood silently over the sleeping form of Leah. His face became tender and in the shadowy light, Orde saw a transformation from brusque impatience to compassion. The doctor did not shake her to awaken her but simply took her hand in his and waited for two minutes before he rubbed it gently.

  Leah inhaled and turned her head toward him. She opened her eyes to blink up in bewilderment at Dr. Letzno. Only then did he turn on the light above her bed. He wrote out the purpose of Captain Orde’s visit.

  “Yes,” Leah said sleepily. “I saw them. Am I the only one who saw them?”

  Orde nodded and took the notepad. Could she describe what she saw? The faces of the men?

  “It
all happened so fast.” She closed her eyes.

  The doctor continued to hold her hand. “She may be too exhausted,” he said to the captain. “I cannot allow you to push her.”

  Leah opened her eyes again. They were clearer. More aware. And they were filled with the memory of what she had seen. “I saw them both quite clearly,” she said in a strong and certain voice. “Both of them. Young Arab men. And a third man who drove the getaway car.”

  Orde smiled with relief. Would she know them if she saw them again? He scrawled the words in large block letters.

  “I could never forget their faces,” she replied. “You must catch them. Such men . . . anyone who would do such a thing.” She paused as if to regain composure, and then as Orde took down every word, she described the details of what she had seen. Everything was clear before her. “They were hardly men. Very young. Not twenty years old. The driver of the second car was older. He wore a red fez hat, and when he shouted, I saw he had a gold tooth in front.”

  An hour later Orde hurried to the telephone to contact the officers on duty at headquarters. Leah Feldstein’s mind had taken a perfect photograph of Evil. Faces were etched indelibly into her mind.

  He read the descriptions to be transmitted to the soldiers manning the roadblocks. Fifty-one Arabs had been detained for questioning. A strict curfew was in force. And now there was a witness who even remembered the color of the cuffed trousers of both the younger terrorists.

  This news turned the dismal gloom of military headquarters to hope. The cellist Leah Feldstein saw everything! We’ll catch the blighters, then, won’t we?

  32

  Dark Counsels

  The sounds of light surrounded the Dead Sea where Ibrahim had parked the car to wait. A warm breeze swept across the waters from Transjordan, and in Victoria’s dream she heard the shouts of millions on that wind: “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is His prophet! Drive them into the sea! Jews to the sea! Eli! Eli, be one of us . . . one of . . . ”